


War Games

by shooting-stetsons (TheUniverseWillSing)



Series: A Study in Lullabies Universe [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Babies, F/M, Fem!Sherlock, Gen, Rule 63, Violence in Later Chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 04:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheUniverseWillSing/pseuds/shooting-stetsons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to A Study in Lullabies. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes' seemingly peaceful cohabitation takes a turn for the worst, as the stress of balancing new motherhood with her feelings for John, keeping up with The Game all while reflecting on old demons, weighs heavy on Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was the bloody papoose that did it, in the end.

 

John hadn’t minded the idea of living with Sherlock Holmes and her young son Alex, especially not after finding out just how limitlessly brilliant the world’s only consulting detective was. He had moved in with her, run with her, shot a man for her, and then took her to the hospital so her ripped stitches could be put back in order. He had protected her from her brother’s anger, protected her from her bully of a friend Victor Trevor, protected her when she didn’t want to be protected, and protected her when she knew she needed to be protected. He’d helped her through long nights with a colicky baby, capturing the both of them in his arms and swaying in time to half-imagined music, and let her kiss him when Alex finally went to sleep.

 

In some ways, the things Mycroft Holmes had said about the battlefield had been true. But in all the places it mattered, he could never have been more wrong. Sherlock had been sent home from the battle just as much as John had been, though for different reasons.

 

And then there was the papoose.

 

He didn't mind looking after Alex, really he was quite fond of the eleven-week-old, but when he started unfolding the pram in lieu of taking Alex with him to Tesco's so his flatmate could have a break, Sherlock stopped him short.

 

"It would be easier with the papoose," she called from where she was reclined back on the sofa, eyes closed (though John had a feeling she was trying very hard to open them) and rimmed with bluish-grey circles. John could tell she'd not been sleeping much, mostly due to the fact that he himself was never woken in the night by the baby crying. Sherlock had had him move the cradle into her room once she'd gone on the mend. "You'll have your hands free, and Alex will probably sleep easier with someone close by."

 

For some godforsaken reason he'd thought it was a good idea, and wrestled his way into the thing that Sherlock hadn't yet touched. Alex laid his warm head on John's chest and gave a tiny infant-smile.

 

"Alright, I'll be back in a bit; try to get some sleep, yeah?" he called from the door. Sherlock raised a hand in acknowledgment but otherwise didn't stir, and John set optimistically off for the shops.

 

In retrospect, the papoose really hadn't been a good idea at all. 

 

While it did cradle the baby safely against him and keep his head supported, it was damn near impossible to bend down and retrieve anything from a low shelf, and John hadn't accounted for the additional bulk of the nappy bag on his hip. Not to mention old ladies kept cooing at how sweet he looked, and trying to touch Alex as though that were perfectly acceptable. Sorry, but being a doctor made John all too aware of how vulnerable babies were to germs because of precisely that, and had to skirt around the shop to keep them at bay.

 

It took a good half hour longer than it should have for John to get everything, and then the chip-n-PIN machine reared its ugly head, and Alex started crying because he couldn't help shouting at the bloody thing. In the end he was attracting too many stares and fled the shop bereft of groceries.

 

When he returned to Baker Street an hour after departing, Sherlock was facing the other way on the sofa and looked even more weary, if that were possible. "Why didn't you get the shopping?" she asked without opening her eyes.

 

He licked his lips and worked at the buckle of the papoose. "I had a row with the chip-n-PIN machine."

 

Sherlock's eyes flew open. "You had a row with a machine?" she asked, equal parts perplexed and amused.

 

"Sort of," he amended. "It sat there and I shouted abuse at it." Alex hiccuped threateningly again, and John quickly sat down to get the infant from the papoose and hold him more comfortably. "Do you have cash?"

 

Sitting up and rubbing her head, Sherlock blinked blearily at him before nodding to the table. "Take my card." She held out her arms and John transferred Alex over before walking to the table. There was a shallow gauge-mark in it that hadn't been there before he left.

 

"Oh, Holmes," he sighed, torn between fondness and irritation. Instead he plucked the card from the thin sleek wallet and left Alex with his mother this time round.

 

The second time he returned Sherlock and Alex were having what the baby books called "tummy time," which was apparently crucial for building neck muscles. Sherlock and her son were face-to-face on the blanket she'd spread over the floor, and she had a few brightly-colored toys scattered around her.

 

"Should I be concerned he hasn't started smiling socially yet?" she called in lieu of a greeting. "He's eleven weeks, and the books all say eight is the usual age."

 

"Preemie, Sherlock," John replied over his shoulder, stacking cans in the cupboards. "He'll smile when he's good and ready; there's no need to rush him."

 

She didn't call back, but John shrugged it off as having nothing to say and finished putting the shopping away. Alex was squealing like a piglet the whole time. "What are you two doing out here?" he grinned, then laughed outright to himself when he saw that Sherlock had fallen asleep on the floor in the span of time it took for him to put away the shopping. Alex was batting at her face with outstretched fingers waving like tiny pink tentacles.

 

John knelt down and rubbed Sherlock's back, in the same way he did to Alex on occasion, to wake her. She needed the rest, certainly, but would probably regret the sore neck later. "Hm?" she murmured, then sprang up as if she had been caught doing something indecent.

 

"Did you sleep at all while I was gone?" he asked as Sherlock picked Alex up and placed him in the plastic swing by the fireplace.

 

Pressing a button on the swing frame, Sherlock let it start mechanically swinging before setting down at her - no, John's - computer. John held out his hand disapprovingly and she sighed, handing it over and rising again to fetch her own from the bedroom. She didn’t bother replying until she was back in her chair. “I tried, but then those people showed up asking about the missing diamond.”

 

He straightened slightly. “Did you take the case?” he asked.

 

Sherlock made a disapproving noise and shook her head, never raising her eyes from the email she was reading. “Dull. I made sure they got the message.” When John didn’t answer right away, she quirked an eyebrow at the computer screen. “Problem?”

 

John shrugged. “I just thought you’d be eager to get back to cases now that you’ve been cleared. You know, by your doctor.” He grinned. “And what a good doctor you have,” he prompted after a moment. She snorted.

 

“If by ‘good’ you mean clearing me for sexual intercourse, coughing, and saying ‘so, what d’you think, fancy a go?’ then you’re correct.” Well, that had been a surprisingly good impersonation of his voice. She cast him a sidelong glance and smirked slowly as he blushed, embarrassed by her frankness. “Afternoon well-spent, nevertheless.”

 

He chuckled to himself, recalling that afternoon with perfect clarity. "Well, maybe that's it, then," he concluded. "You're just going to miss _this_." With his free hand John gestured between them, trying to encapsulate the give-and-take, the easy touches, the occasional kisses over the sink while giving Alex a bath, that had been built between them for the past seven weeks. He probably failed.

 

"I could quit anytime I wanted to," replied Sherlock instantly with the air of a joke lingering between consonants. "You're the sentimental one, after all."

 

"Says the woman who spent her entire phone memory taking photos of her kid and now only has room for fifteen texts in her inbox." He managed to get his hands up in time to deflect the projectile shoe going for his face and laughed at his disgruntled flatmate. "I'm kidding, Sherlock. It's sweet, no, really. Seeing how much you focus on him, it's enough to make a bloke wonder what you'd be if you didn't have him." He rubbed his eyes and smiled across the room at her.

 

Immersed back into the screen of her laptop, Sherlock shrugged. "Dead, most likely," she said matter-of-factly.

 

John nearly fell off the sofa, the warmth sucked out of the flat in less than a second. "W-what?"

 

She glanced up at him as though about to make a scathing remark but seemed to see something in his face, and looked quickly back down at her laptop. "Um, yes. If I'd never had sex in exchange for drugs Mycroft probably wouldn't have sent me to rehab and, on the road I was going down, I would have OD'ed - _again_ \- approximately three weeks before I met you. And if Alex had been stillborn or if he'd died I would have killed myself. _Yes_ , I'm fine, _no_ , I _don't_ want to talk about it, and if Mycroft or Lestrade ask we never had this conversation. I need to go to the bank; are you coming?"

 

Before John could mentally make the leap from suicide to banking, Sherlock had gotten up and fetched Alex's car seat from behind the sofa. She put a hand on John's shoulder to balance herself, and for a moment her thumb brushed through the short hairs at the base of his neck before she pushed herself upright. He shivered slightly and cleared his throat. "Um, yes, sure. Why are we-?"

 

"An old university...Sebastian Wilkes, knew him in uni, he needs a favor. Come on, John, help me get Alex ready; where did you put the nappy bag?"

 

 

 

When John imagined the bank Sherlock was talking about, he certainly wasn't expecting one of the biggest trade establishments in London to be their destination. Nor did he expect to be sequestered in a posh office over forty floors up with a man who had to be, no holds barred, one of the biggest slimy wankers he'd ever encountered.

 

"Sherlock Holmes, back from the dead, eh?" he drawled with a sneer that was probably seen as charming in the business he ran.

 

Sherlock's returning smile was cold and sharp as freshly-chipped ice. "Sebastian." They shook hands viciously; if they were dogs their ears would have been flicked back in preparation of a face-off. "This is my friend, Doctor John Watson."

 

_Friend?_ Alright, he knew what they were doing wasn't exactly exclusive or even a relationship, but that had stung. He would have let it lie, but then Sebastian’s tiny eyes raked over him - “Friend?” - that something unpleasant boiled up inside of his chest and he spat out the word, “Colleague,” before he consciously made the decision to do so. Sherlock stiffened beside him, just barely, but enough to be noticed. Guilt instantly wriggled like a snake in John’s gut, but he couldn’t very well say “Oh, never mind, we’re friends after all,” now could he?

 

Sebastian seemed completely unfazed, almost even approving of John’s correction, and instead turned back to Sherlock with a smug look. “And who’s this?” he asked, holding out his hands to Alex. “Surely it’s not yours, Holmes?”

 

“He’s my son, yes,” replied Sherlock, a dangerous edge to her voice. “His name is Alexander.” Her head tilted slightly to the left, challenging him to say something, but Wilkes merely smiled.

 

“Congratulations. Never thought you had it in you, really.” He tuned to John like he was sharing some great joke. “At uni, we joked that she would probably eat her own young.” Chuckling to himself, he gestured for Sherlock and John to sit as he settled himself behind his desk.

 

John glanced over at Sherlock and saw how dangerously still she’d gone, wondering how much she could take before diving across the desk and strangling her old uni mate. “Anyway, you’ve been busy,” she deviated awkwardly. “Two trips around the world in a month? Impressive, Seb.”

 

The banker laughed, pointing a finger accusingly at Sherlock, trying to look amused even with a worried gleam in his eyes. “You’re doing it, that thing, you’re at it again. She had this trick,” he told John, “back in uni. Took one look at you and could tell you your whole life story.”

 

“I’ve seen it,” John nodded, looking anywhere but at Sherlock. It felt as though they were talking about her like she wasn’t there, and he hated how guilty it made him feel.

 

“Yeah, well, it put the wind up everybody. Every morning, coming into breakfast just for her to know who’d been shagging whom the night before? Creepy, that is. We all hated her.”

 

Even without looking, John knew that Sherlock had slouched slightly in her seat. “I simply observed,” she murmured with none of her usual fire.

 

Shaking his head, Seb straightened a mug of pens on his desk and faced his old schoolmate. “So, what _gave me away_ , Holmes?” There was a drawl to his voice that John didn’t like, not at all. It was something hard, demanding and dominating, as though this spoiled prat had something over Sherlock that no one else knew about, or everyone knew about and took his side in the matter. “Is there a mustard stain on my tie from Manhattan?” Sherlock opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off. “Or maybe the mud on my shoes?”

 

John looked at Sherlock, waiting for her to make one of her grand speeches of deduction and blow Seb’s smug little smile right off his face, but instead she replied, “I was just having a word with your secretary; she told me.” Wilkes laughed, an unfriendly condescending sound, and clapped his hands together.

 

“I’m glad you could make it over, we’ve had a break in,” he cut to the chase. “Someone broke in last night, didn’t steal anything, but left a little message. Let me show you.”

 

“You didn’t talk to the secretary,” murmured John to Sherlock as they trailed behind Wilkes out of his office.

 

She rolled her eyes. “No, I didn’t. Excellent observation.”

 

They followed Wilkes through the trade floor, leaving Alex with the secretary (though Sherlock looked reluctant). As they trailed after the man, John leaned over and whispered, “A bit of a ponce, isn’t he?”

 

She lowered her eyes and shook her head. “You have no idea.”

 

“Still, a case is a case.”

 

“It’s not a _case_ , John, it’s a _favour_.”

 

In they went past security points and ID card scanners until they reached the office of destination, bearing a portrait of the bank’s founder on the back wall with a yellow line painted over the eyes, and an unusual symbol on the wall beside it.

 

“We’ve no idea how they did it,” explained Wilkes, sounding baffled in a very satisfying way as he showed them surveillance footage. “One minute nothing, and the next, the painting’s ruined beyond repair.”

 

Sherlock closely inspected the footage at least a dozen times, eyes narrowed with thought as she attempted to decode how the intruder could have gotten past the locked doors. John watched the blue light of the screen glow in the hollows of her cheeks, the unnatural shine in her eyes, the inky blue of her hair in its reflection. Then a small shadow formed at the corner of her mouth; she was smirking. “I’ll need to have a look at the trade floor,” she announced, straightening and taking off without waiting for allowance.

 

"So," began Wilkes as Sherlock darted around the trading floor. "How long have you been dating?"

 

At first John didn't understand the implication. "Oh, I'm not - oh! No, Sherlock and I, we aren't, er, involved." _Anymore_ , his brain supplied as she investigated. Sherlock was back with her work, like they had agreed from the start, and that was fine even if she did protest that it was only a favour. Sherlock Holmes didn’t do anyone favours, not even John.

 

Wilkes looked smugly unsurprised, but raised his eyebrows in an attempt at faking it. "Ah. So sorry to presume, but it's rather easy to make the leap with you towing the sprog around." John fought a surge of irritation at the man; Alex wasn’t a sprog.

 

“Yes, well,” he said, without following it with anything because he didn’t know what to say. Wilkes seemed annoyingly unruffled.

 

Still, he felt the taller man’s eyes burning into him, appraising as a few clerks started muttering darkly about the odd woman darting around the floor. “But you are shagging her, aren’t you?” continued Wilkes as though John really wanted to talk about it. “Why else would you hang around a freak like her _and_ a newborn but for a good shag?”

 

Anger erupted in John’s chest like something prehistoric and instinctual. All he wanted in that very moment was to punch this smarmy posh man right in the nose, but that was bound to get them thrown out and take Sherlock off the case, which would make her very cross with him, even if he was defending her honor. “And you would know?” he instead replied, words sharp through barely-parted lips.

 

“I would, as a matter of fact,” Wilkes practically bragged, scratching a spot below his right ear. “Back in uni, Holmes was always hanging around near the building where I took most of my classes; I wouldn’t know until later that it was where her _drugs_ _dealer_ did his business. We talked a few times, nothing out of the ordinary, just small talk and academics. I thought she was attractive, in a junkie, space-alien sort of way. My mates told me to go for it - bet me I wouldn't, actually - so I did. It was great at first, but then she just couldn't stop _deducing_ things, and...well, at least we’ve all grown up a bit."

 

Well, of course John couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the man now, even if he was still a git. It made sense that a beautiful woman like Sherlock could intimidate people, and that her almost obsessive need to prove herself smarter than everyone else in the room put a strain on relationships, especially combined with the stress of uni. It felt like Sherlock was a puzzle, and yet another piece was falling into place, but the picture on the box was still vastly different from what John had gathered so far. But of course he wasn’t past the old try, try again technique.

 

“Hate that bloke,” he still murmured when he had another moment alone with Sherlock. He still had to hold solidarity, after all, and was pleased to see her smile.

 

“I know,” she said, hefting Alex’s mobile seat from the secretary’s hands. As was custom from the past few weeks when Sherlock was discouraged from lifting anything heavier than Alex on her own, John took half of the handle in his right hand while she used her left, and they exited the building like that. “That’s why this is _not_ a case.”


	2. Chapter 2

John had been left in the corridor with Alex while Sherlock searched Van Coon’s flat. It was understandable to keep the baby out of the flat where a trap could be waiting, but John was annoyed at being left out. He was living with the woman to be her partner, not her babysitter. Oh, good, and now he felt like Mrs. Hudson. 

 

As they walked back to the street to find a cab, Sherlock having soundly ‘dissed’ the new DI on scene, he fought not to sigh. He hadn’t even been allowed inside once the police had shown up, because the baby might contaminate the crime scene, though it hadn’t stopped him hearing the degrading rant Sherlock had shot at Dimmock. Still, he couldn’t shake...

 

“Oh, spit it out,” she said as she attempted to flag a cab for the third time, frustration evident.

 

“What?”

 

“You’ve been sighing all the way down the stairs.”

 

He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

 

Sharp eyes were immediately burning into the side of his head. “No, it obviously isn’t nothing or you would have a better hold of yourself, so I shall repeat - _spit it out_ ,” she ground out as a cab finally pulled up. She climbed in while he was getting a hold of himself, and buckled Alex’s seat in between them.

 

“Sherlock, this is a case.”

 

Now it was her turn to sigh, noisily. “John, I’ve already said three times -”

 

“And that was before there was a man with a bullet through his temple.”

 

“Why are you so determined to end this?” snapped Sherlock, whipping her head around to glare at him.

 

“I just thought you’d want less distractions in your work,” shrugged John, trying to be casual. “You told me the day we met that you were married to the work and devoted to your son. You and the work have been apart for a while, and now you’re back in. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable with your priorities.”

 

Turning back to face the front of the cab, a furious flush rose up Sherlock’s cheeks. “My _priorities_ are -” She sucked in a deep sigh through the nose. “Fine. Fine, if this is what you want, _fine_. You were getting tedious anyway.”

 

“Tedious?” John couldn’t fight the flare of self-consciousness.

 

“Always so... _present_ , always hovering like a mother hen,” groused the detective with arms crossed. “So clingy - why so clingy, John?”

 

“ _Clingy?_ ”

 

“You couldn’t seem to go more than five minutes without _touching_ me, rubbing my back, twirling my hair; it made my skin crawl.”

 

Even though John knew she was pulling all of this right out her arse, he couldn’t help looking back on the past eight weeks and reevaluating everything he’d done, every move he’d made to see if he really was being too clingy. He had thought Sherlock was enjoying herself just as much as he had, falling into their companionship as easily as taking a deep breath before a dive. Then he considered the Wednesday before last, their afternoon well-spent, and wondered how she felt about that in hindsight as well.

 

“If you want this to be over, then it’s over,” he finally decided. “If you want to carry on, I’d be more than-”

 

“I want it to be over.” The hard edge of her voice could cut glass. “Relationships are poison, obviously. We’re no more than colleagues; your obligation to me is null.”

 

“Didn’t realize I had an obligation.”

 

“Well, now you don’t.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“ _Fine_.”

 

“ _Fine!_ ”

 

With matching infuriated huffs, John and Sherlock turned forcefully away from one another, and remained stonily silent until the cab ride from hell was over. As soon as they arrived at the bank and had paid the cabbie Alex started bawling to be fed, so Sherlock grudgingly stayed outside - holding firm to not making John _obligated_ \- and dug in the nappy bag while John went in. He inquired with the secretary only to find out that Seb was at a very important lunch meeting halfway across town. He relayed the message to Sherlock, and she got so furious that it may as well have been John who arranged the meeting for how she fumed while flagging another taxi.

 

"We can't afford to take a cab everywhere," John pointed out as she ruthlessly strapped the still-crying baby into his seat. “We have bills to pay.”

 

She hotly retorted, "I am _not_ walking in the cold with Alex; he'll catch his death in this weather."

 

“He’s bundled up to high heaven.”

 

“He’s a preemie, John; his immune and nervous systems are weak.”

 

“Yeah, I factored that in, funnily enough. For his adjusted age, he’s fine - even ahead of most babies his age.”

 

Sherlock glared again, and he threw his hands into the air. Far be it for him to try to save them some money, even if Seb had just given him a cheque for fifteen thousand pounds a few hours ago - they still had to make what they had last until Sherlock put it away. And, knowing how the consulting detective tended to put off doing things she found dull, that could be at least another week.

 

In the end they took a bus as a compromise, though Sherlock spent the entire ride glaring mistrustfully at fellow passengers while they glared back due to the fussy baby. At least three times on the way across town Sherlock told him exactly what to tell Seb to get him to understand the gravity of the situation, and the only reason John listened each time was because he didn’t want to be caught intimidated by the bloke.

 

“Now John, make sure you tell him -”

 

“Yes, Sherlock, I know!” he sighed before slipping into the restaurant and relaying the message. Seb was just as irritating and condescending as Sherlock had anticipated, and milked John of all the information he had before smirking and asking, “So, where’s Sherlock?”

 

He coughed and averted his eyes. “She’s, er, outside with the baby.”

 

For some reason Sob and his mates found that hilarious, cackling after John as he stormed out of the restaurant. “Just tell Sherlock to do what I asked of her in the first place, Watson,” called Seb at the last moment before the doors swung shut after him. He told Sherlock what he’d said, and she huffed as she bounced Alex in her arms.

 

“And did you tell him Van Coon was dead?” she inquired sharply.

 

“Of _course_! Knew I’d forgotten something!” Silver eyes narrowed, and he ploughed on. “Yes, Sherlock, I told him. He was upset but not willing to be distracted.”

 

She snorted. “Of course he wouldn’t; he only ever wants what will directly gratify hi- will you _stop?_ ” She directed the last bit at her squirming son, trying to keep him covered against the chill March air and feed him at the same time.

 

“Oh, hand him over,” John sighed, holding out his arms, and she reluctantly passed the baby off. “I know Wilkes is a bit of a prick, but I don’t see what you’ve got against him, other than he broke off with you.” He settled Alex into the crook of his elbow, huddling him close against the cold and shielding him from the light breeze at Sherlock’s insistence.

 

Sherlock handed over a self-warmed bottle with a raised eyebrow. “He broke off with me - is that what he told you?” John nodded, and she snorted again. “Well, as I said before about gratification. He wanted you on his side because he’s intimidated by me. What did he tell you?”

 

He recounted the brief tale Sebastian had told him, and she coldly laughed outright. “Well, he certainly knows how to twist a tale,” she allowed. “The fact of the matter was that his mates bet him he couldn’t convince the school freak to climb into bed with him. He said he wanted to talk about class, we shagged instead - he was more appealing back then when I was high half the time - and the next morning I walked into the canteen to find him making a total three-hundred quid off his mates. I accused him and he made a great show of breaking off with me.”

 

It felt as though John had been punched in the chest. “So, he lied?” he asked, unable to fight a fond smile as Alex tried with all his little face-muscles to suck the bottle right out of John’s hand.

 

“He simply led you to a convoluted conclusion with an inventive retelling of some of the facts. Give him back when he’s finished.”

 

“What, you think I’ll run off?”

 

“ _No_ , I just want him _back_.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Fine!”

 

“Oh, we are _not_ doing this again.”

 

“Fine.”

 

John glared. Sherlock glared back.

 

This was not going to be a simple case, by any means; even if it were simple, Sherlock would make it more difficult just for her own pleasure and to watch John dance.

 

 

 

John would have been attracted to Sarah Sawyer regardless. It had nothing to do with his spat with Sherlock, nothing at all. Miss Sawyer was a beautiful woman, after all, and he was a healthy man of reasonable age; it was natural to get a little crush. Even if it was the morning after breaking off with Sherlock - which it wasn’t at all in the first place, anyway, because they’d never really been together, had they?

 

Either way, Sarah Sawyer was pretty, polite, flirting with him, and about as polar opposite from Sherlock as a woman could be. Not to mention, she was giving him a job, so it was good things all round.

 

“I said, could you pass me a pen,” droned Sherlock the moment he walked through the door to the flat. It looked more cluttered than usual, as though his flatmate had taken to picking up books and dropping them all over the place when they grew dull - rather like the men in her life, it seemed, and she was rubbing Alex’s back like after a feeding while staring down at a thick tome that squashed the sofa cushion.

 

He blinked, instantly taken off-guard. “When was that?”

 

“About an hour ago.”

 

Well. “Hadn’t noticed I’d gone out, then,” he sighed, picking through debris to the desk and grabbing the first Biro he saw before realizing this was probably e _xactly_ what Sherlock wanted. He was bowing to her again. Bristling but not willing to back down halfway through doing something, he placed the pen in the crest of pages in her book just as Alex let out a hefty belch. “Had a job interview.”

 

“And how’d that go?” she loftily replied, holding Alex in front of her and trying to get him to smile by baring her gleaming teeth, obviously not paying him the slightest attention.

 

He allowed his mind to wander back to Sarah's office as he ventured toward the fireplace to take a look at what Sherlock had been working on. "It went great," he said with confidence. He thought of Sarah's hair, her smile, the flirtatious lilt to her voice, the way she kept glancing up from his resume as if uncertain he were real. "She was great."

 

"She?"

 

In an instant the peeled-back smile vanished from Sherlock’s face as she snapped her head up to look at him, and John felt his gut constrict with guilt. “ _The_ ,” he hastily amended. “ _The_ job was great.” Silver eyes narrowed to thin slits, and she looked ready to say something before Alex started coughing and she refocused all energy on making sure he wasn’t choking on anything.

 

“Well, as long as you stop griping about not having work,” she allowed after a few moments, bringing Alex back up to eye-level and continuing to smile grotesquely at him.

 

John glanced over and snorted. “If that’s how you’re going to get him to smile, he’ll grow up to be an axe murderer.”

 

“ _Don’t_ tell me how to raise my son, John,” she snapped, though still through that odd facsimile of joy.

 

Staring intently at his mother with a scowl on his wrinkled face, Alex reached out a pudgy finger and poked at her bared teeth. She instantly let up the leer to press a kiss to his palm while John watched from his chair and felt his heart warm at the sight. How could anyone think Sherlock was a sociopath after watching her spend two minutes with her child?

 

Then Alex reeled back and batted her in the face - obviously not hard enough to hurt, but fast enough to surprise Sherlock. She snorted and grinned for a moment, and then her eyes boggled and mouth fell open in shock. “Oh, John, he smiled at me!”

 

“What, really?” asked John, forgetting instantly about how chilly the flat was with their little spat in favor of crossing the sitting room to kneel by the sofa. After staring for a moment at his prompting smile, Alex’s lips parted into a small drool-covered grin; John and Sherlock cheered him on as if he had just run an Olympic record 100-meter dash.

 

For the next half hour they huddled together on the sofa with Alex on Sherlock’s lap, making probably the silliest faces they could think of and playing “dancing phalanges” before the infant’s eyes to make him smile again, and, on one occasion, squeal like a piglet. When Sherlock ran out of memory on her phone again she took John’s and snapped as many photographs as she could. By the time Alex started to feel over-stimulated and got teary-eyed she and John were breathless and flushed with their efforts, unable to stop smiling themselves.

 

They met eyes as Sherlock lifted the baby to her shoulder and rubbed his back, then quickly glanced away. Needless to say, John looked back on their quarrel the day before and felt rather silly, and could tell that his flatmate felt the same way. Even if she was carefully averting her gaze and trying to discreetly wipe her eyes, still caught up in the milestone her son had made.

 

“Truce?” offered John, and Sherlock wanly smiled, briefly clasping his hand in hers before returning it to the back of Alex’s head. Then she carefully raised herself from the sofa cushions and walked with a swaying motion in her arms back to her bedroom where Alex’s cot was, making soft sussing noises in his ear as she went to calm him down for a nap.

 

While she was diverted John glanced down at her laptop screen, finding the online news report on the journalist killed in his flat - killed in the exact same way as Van Coon.

 

They left the sleeping baby with Mrs. Hudson and went to Scotland Yard to try imploring with Dimmock to see reason, only turning it into Sherlock bullying the DI into seeing the journalist’s flat. Of course, pushy as ever even if she had been over the moon only an hour before.


	3. Chapter 3

"I need to ask someone’s advice," she stated as they left the Yard, checking the three texts in her phone inbox - or at least John thought until he saw a picture of Alex's smile replace her phone's plain background.

 

It was almost enough to distract him, but not quite. "Wait, can you say that again?" he asked teasingly.

 

"I will not."

 

They wandered round back of the National Gallery and found a young man of a few years Sherlock's junior spray-painting a police officer onto the fire door. "Raz!" called Sherlock, using a voice that sounded younger and more girlish than her own as they approached.

 

The man - Raz - looked up and grinned. "Holmes! Haven't seen you around lately; big brother finally catch you?"

 

"It was a long time coming," replied Sherlock cryptically before pulling her phone out again. She scrolled through her pictures until finding the ones she'd taken of the graffiti at the bank. Raz peered at the phone over her shoulder and made a surprised face, but opted not to comment on the baby pictures. They conferred over the type and brand of paint for several minutes, losing John's interest until he realized the conversation had turned.

 

"...about a year ago?" finished Sherlock, trailing off and looking awkward for the first time since John had met her at Baker Street.

 

Raz thoughtfully rubbed his stubbly chin. "No, I don't remember you comin' round with - shit, run!" He dumped his can into Sherlock's hands as two police officers came barreling around the corner. She instantly swiveled and shoved the can on John before taking off after Raz.

 

"Wh...?"

 

\---

 

“Sherlock, they’re giving me an ASBO!” he half-snarled, uncaring whether his flatmate was trying both to study the cypher and quiet the infant screaming in her ear.

 

“Hm?” she murmured dazedly, bouncing Alex with one arm and reaching out to read notes tape to the wall with her other. “Oh, yes, fine.” 

 

As John moved to take off his jacket she spun around and pointed at him. “No, I need you to go to Scotland Yard and get some information on Lukis for me.” She waited until he’d grudgingly put the jacket back on before continuing. “Get his diary, anything that will track his movements, any information at all! I’m going to go see Van Coon’s PA once he’s gone back to sleep to see if anything coincides.” 

 

He stared incredulously at her, unable, at the moment, to puzzle out how his life had gone from getting shot to having nothing to chasing serial killers and getting ASBOs, and why this skinny sleep-deprived woman was responsible for it. And why he didn’t seem to mind as much as he ought to. Instead he focused on their uneasy truce from earlier, trying to keep his patience. It wasn’t as though Sherlock didn’t have enough to think about at the moment, anyway.

 

When he failed to move quickly enough, she shifted impatiently. “ _Now_ , John!”

 

“Fine, fine!”

 

\---

 

“You want lucky cat?” the old woman behind the counter asked as John inspected the cheap trinkets in the shop. He gave a brief smile and turned away. “Your wife, she will like!”

 

As if on reflex, he and Sherlock looked at each other. She’d knotted her hair up high after John left the flat rather than keeping it tied simply as usual, exposing the curve of her neck if she’d bother taking off her scarf. It wasn’t even that cold outside - though why John would want to see her neck was none of his business anymore. 

 

Not that it had been his _business_ to see it, but - it was funny, how something so ordinary could be so different when covered up by a sparse piece of cloth most of the time. Watching her bow over a microscope, or lie back on the sofa with Alex on her chest, that long expanse of white skin bared until she tucked in her chin and sent ripples over the soft flesh like folds in cloth. It had been bad enough before they’d been together; afterwards it was like a fixation for John, irresistibly smooth to the touch and soft where the small hairs grew in the back. He would love putting his hand there, gently winding his fingers through the curls and feeling the tension roll from her. 

 

But she hadn’t liked that, apparently, because it was too clingy.

 

“No, thank you,” he curtly told the woman, turning back to the tags.

 

For several moments longer he felt Sherlock’s eyes burning the back of his head; he looked up and she had turned away.

 

\---

 

“Wait here, I’ll go in through the back,” instructed Sherlock, and before John could protest she was gone.

 

He sighed heavily and tilted his head back. “Really? Would you at least, you know, mind letting me in this time?” he called through the letterbox.

 

If he held still enough, he could only just catch faint traces of noise in Soo Lin Yao’s flat, such as the window scraping open or the skittering of what might have been a beaded curtain. Other than those small traces, there was nothing until Sherlock’s muffled voice called out, “Someone’s already been here!”

 

“Sherlock would you please let me in?!” he shouted into the keyhole, to no response. A long sigh huffed involuntarily from his lips. “No, of course not, because _I’m with Sherlock bloody Holmes, who always works alone except when it’s convenient, aren’t I?_ ”

 

Sherlock murmured something inside, the tone similar to that of a curse, and it was followed shortly by a muted crash. John blinked at the door, trying to figure out if there was something wrong or if Sherlock was just clumsy - then realized how idiotic that very notion was. Sherlock Holmes was never anything but meticulous in her work, especially when it came to potential crime scenes.

 

“Sherlock?”

 

He flipped open the letterbox door again and listened, only hearing the faint rustling of fabric, but there was something agitated about the movements, jerky and fast rather than his flatmate’s usual seamless glide.

 

“Sherlock, if you don’t answer me in the next four seconds, I’m breaking the door in,” he warned.

 

His answer was a choked-off wheeze of his name.

 

Adrenaline, when harnessed by a well-trained mind, made the body a powerful weapon. It also made doors about as pregnable as a damp paper bag. As fear and anger sent an overload of oxygen through his veins, John reeled back and precisely kicked just below the doorknob, moving in the moment it swung open.

 

The inside of the house looked like a crime scene. The knocked-over furniture And broken photograph was bad enough, but the man swathed in black quickly fleeing out the back window, and Sherlock lying unmoving on the carpet, made his hand go steady.

 

"Sherlock?" he breathlessly asked, feeling along her sides for signs of blood or breaks. She wasn't breathing, terrifyingly still and impossibly small, until John's hands reached of their own volition to loosen the knot on her scarf.

 

When she twitched but still didn’t rouse he gave her cheek one sharp rap, and she was almost instantly doubled over gasping for air. She half clutched at John's arm and half shoved him away, wheezing painfully with every breath as John rubbed her back. "Easy, Sherlock, take it easy..."

 

Half-heartedly biting his shoulder as she curled around him and coughed up bile, Sherlock's breathing slowly returned to normal, though so much couldn't be said for the angry red skin on her neck. Already it had started bruising to match the dark purplish circles around her eyes.

 

"Soo L...Yao left here inahurry three da...ago," she forced out, pushing herself up with John's shoulder as leverage the moment she could take a deep breath without choking. She only briefly staggered, brushing away his attempt to help with a poor attempt at a nonchalant sneer aimed over her shoulder. "We have t... find her; come on."

 

"Sherlock, you've just been strangled half to death with your own scarf!"

 

"And if you'd been...same, you'd still sa...fine!" rasped back the detective, words lost and running together in her raw throat.

 

John rolled his eyes and took off after her down the street. "Yeah, well it's different for girls, isn't it? You've got biologically smaller and more vulnerable necks, and men typically have bigger hands. If it'd been me it would have taken less time and effort to regain consciousness."

 

She shrugged, scowling at his poor attempt to joke, and trudged on. Blood vessels had burst in her eyes, blooming like rose petals and making the irises appear even lighter.

 

\---

 

Soo Lin. What a pretty name. What a pretty girl. What a pretty corpse.

 

John sat dumbly on the sofa, trying to sort through an endless tower of books while Sherlock paced the distance from her bedroom to the sitting room window with Alex. He was colicky tonight. And Soo Lin was dead.

 

"Take him, will you?" sighed his flatmate, dumping the baby into John's limp arms - he secured them immediately around the child and automatically set to patting him on the bottom. "My arms are killing me, and I might have more luck with the cypher than you're having in this state."

 

Something in him jumped to attention even as he refused to tear his eyes away from Alex's red blotchy face. "State?" he asked levelly.

 

Sherlock nodded, hands on her waist and absently rubbing her tender neck. "Yes, your state, the state in which you're mourning someone you've never known."

 

He briefly had to clench his jaw to keep from shouting. "There's a difference between mourning someone I never knew and mourning someone I could have saved," he ground out between grinding teeth. It was the same as in the war; he knew there were men out there dying every day, but was able to sleep at night because he had never and would never meet them. But when it was men he had passed in the barracks and nodded good-morning to, women who shared the sweets their families sent with anyone they passed, stupid kids who went into war thinking they were going to be heroes, the ones John saw every day before his eyes but never really spoke to besides a fleeting hello, who later died either beneath his hands or across a bloody battlefield before he could stagger his way to them.

 

Alex’s cries rose in pitch because John had stopped patting his bottom, too lost in thought. Sherlock had turned back to the wall of book boxes and missed his little display entirely. She’d let her hair down and it shone in the lamplight - John didn’t think he’d ever seen it down before. It was pretty.

 

\---

 

_“John.”_

 

_He looked up to see a woman composed entirely of flames standing before him in the Baker Street flat, smoke hovering around her head in deadly black curls._

 

_Through dry lips he whispered, “Hello.”_

 

_With long, elegant strides she reached him in two steps, straddling his lap with her legs and wrapping long fiery arms around his neck. She burned, flashes of blue flame shining from where her yes ought to be._

 

_“John.”_

 

_“What is it?” he asked. There was something small and keening in her hissing voice, something that worried him._

 

_It hurt, holding her so close, the fire licking his clothes and skin even though they didn’t catch. But he couldn’t let her go, he just couldn’t let her fall away, because the longer he held her the more he realized that he was the only thing keeping her together._

 

_With delicately searing fingers she cupped the back of his head and pulled herself down into a kiss that felt like touching starlight. She burned, and he let himself burn with her._

 

_Then, in the corner of the room a baby started to cry. The fire fell away as Sherlock sprang from his lap, dark hair falling loose over her shoulders, and sprang up again in the cradle. Even as John let out a shout of alarm Sherlock was unconcerned, simply sitting herself beside the cradle and leaning down to stroke the flames. Her face contorted with fatigue and pain as the fire ate its way up her arm, but she didn’t let up, not for a moment._

 

John woke up with the right side of his face squashed against his fist, at his desk in the surgery. Right. He was supposed to be seeing patients, not napping. However, his intercom was silent, and when he looked up at the clock he saw it was nearly five. The whole day, in fact, was a bit of a blur when it came to the patients he’d seen - maybe he’d done his work and just couldn’t remember because of the fatigue?

 

“Did I have any more to do?” he asked vaguely out in the waiting room.

 

Sarah looked up from her files and gave him a Look. A very distinct Look that called out trouble and made John squirm. “I might’ve taken one or two of yours,” she said. The receptionist snorted. “Well...maybe more like...five or-or six.”

 

He sighed, already seeing himself lining up for the dole. “Oh, god, I’m sorry. That wasn’t very professional.”

 

“No, it wasn’t.”

 

At least Sarah wasn’t one to beat around the bush. He rubbed the back of his neck with another sigh. “I’m sorry. I had a bit of a late one. There was a sort of, er, book event, and Alex was up all night with colic, and I know that’s no excuse, but it won’t always be like this,” he explained.

 

As he spoke, Sarah had bit her lip and crossed her arms, but seemed more puzzled than put out. “You’re a parent?”

 

“Wh...? Oh! No, no, Alex isn’t my son,” he assured her.

 

“So he’s your girlfriend’s son?” Sarah looked as though she regretted speaking the moment after the words came out.

 

John smiled. “No. My flatmate’s son, yes, but she’s not my girlfriend. The book thing wasn’t a date.” She looked down off to the side, and he felt his smile turn into a smirk. “I...don’t have one tonight, either.”

 

Her returning smile was promising.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock didn’t look up from where she was sitting on the floor beside the coffee table, Alex’s Moses basket sitting on its surface. It was the perfect height for her to curl just above it, one hand dangling into the basket to stroke her son’s hair in a haunting replica of the dream John had had earlier. However, by the time John got back to Baker Street he had forgotten that he’d even had any dream at all. He did notice that she looked tired, though. Why she wasn’t sleeping whenever Alex was, like all of the parenting books had instructed she ought to, John had no idea.

 

“I need some air,” she said carefully, keeping her voice low, but even then it held traces of an order. “We’re going out tonight.”

 

A surge of irritation made John purse his lips. Did she simply assume that John had no life other than the one he had in Baker Street? Had he been born for the sole purpose of answering her every beck and call? “I can’t tonight; I’ve got a date,” he replied with a perverse sense of satisfaction.

 

Her head snapped up suddenly, and she jerked her hand out of the Moses basket to brush her own long fringe from her eyes. “A date?”

 

“Yeah, you know, a night where normal people who fancy each other go out and have fun?” he retorted.

 

Lips pursed and brows furrowed, Sherlock was working her way into a scowl of epic proportions. “That’s what I was s _uggesting,_ ” she growled.

 

John froze, feeling for probably the fourth time that week like he’d been punched in the face. Was she playing with him? Two days before she was saying she wanted to be rid of him, and now she was trying to get him on a date with her? “I’m not a puppet, Sherlock,” he told her sternly. “I’m not here for you to string along as you please. Do you want to keep seeing me or not? Because if you keep playing games with me, keeping me from meeting someone just to keep you occupied, I’m not going to have any other choice but to move out.” 

 

He said it firmly, with arms crossed and a stern expression on his face, but watching Sherlock’s eyes widen and her face slacken into shock nearly broke his resolve.

 

Within moments, though, she had composed herself. “Where are you taking her?” she asked, brushing nonexistent wrinkles from her shirt.

 

“Cinema,” he clipped back.

 

She rolled her eyes and reached for a flyer sitting on the table. “Dull. Predictable. Try this instead. I’m sure she’ll _love_ it,” she tonelessly told him as she shoved the flyer in his face.

 

He looked down at the flyer and frowned. “The circus? Sherlock -”

 

“This is where we’ll find our smugglers, John,” interrupted Sherlock. “It all fits together; they’re only in the city for a day and we’re bound to find an acrobat capable of scaling a building.”

 

Before she could go on he pushed the flyer back at her. “Sherlock, I’m going on a date for a night off, not a night of investigating.”

 

“John, I need your-”

 

“You seemed to get on fine without me before we met,” he argued before she could begin, heat rising to his face. “Oh, but it’s different now, isn’t it? Now that you need a babysitter.” She opened her mouth to protest but he continued onward. “Do you have any idea how many people think Alex is my child when I tell them about what I’ve been doing lately? I spend half my time looking after a baby that isn’t even mine, while you’re out playing cops and robbers! It’s irresponsible, Sherlock, and it’s only going to make Alex’s upbringing harder if he doesn’t have a clear idea of who his parents are. And sometimes, it feels bloody-...Sherlock, what are you doing?”

 

As he’d been speaking - alright, ranting - and steadily working himself up into a good proper rage, Sherlock had slowly sunk down until she was sitting ramrod straight on the sofa, hands opening and closing into loose fists at her sides as she stared determinedly at her knees, a glassy, faraway look in her red-rimmed eyes.

 

“Sherlock?” repeated John, inching towards his flatmate.

 

After a rather worrying moment she seemed to snap out of it, blinking fast and sucking in a breath as her spine bowed back to its natural posture. “What?” she asked, apparently oblivious to her moment in the Twilight Zone. “Don’t you have a date to get ready for? No, really, go get dressed, I’ll book your tickets for you. _Go!_ ” She ushered him away into his bedroom, though for a moment he was fairly certain she leaned heavily against the wall at the bottom of the stairs before trudging back to the sitting room.

 

As he was getting dressed John heard Sherlock below in the sitting room, likely standing over Alex as she tended to do instead of sleep like she ought, while speaking with the ticket man at the circus. “Yes, two,” she confirmed in a wearily bored voice. “Under the name of Holmes. Yes, It’ll be on a card. Thank you.” John opened his door and peered down the stairs, just able to see Sherlock sinking down onto the sofa and putting her head in her hands.

 

He looked down on her for a few moments before closing himself back in his room. She’d been acting odd lately - odder than usual, at least. Though he supposed getting himself worked up over their disagreements didn’t help things either. Still. 

 

From the very start Sherlock had insisted that as soon as she was back with the Work, she and John would end their sham of a relationship - that was what she’d called it, a sham. She’d even reminded him periodically throughout her recovery process, “Don’t get used to this, darling. It’ll all be over soon.” For two months he’d been reminding himself of that, trying not to get too attached even as he was drawn inexorably closer with every breath. But when he’d been the one trying to make a clean break, she’d resisted. She’d been angry. And now she was using her impressive mind to play games with him. It made no sense at all, and John was not in the mood to play.

 

When he trudged down the stairs half an hour later - he’d opted for a quick shower just to be on the safe side - it was to find Sherlock sleeping, prostrate, on the sofa, head dipping between her knees and hands hanging limp. He sighed; why was she always dropping off in the most uncomfortable positions imaginable, was that just how she normally slept?

 

“Sherlock, wake up,” he chided, tapping a finger against the crown of her head until she made a keening sound of protest and sat up. “Don’t understand how you can sleep like that.”

 

Rubbing her eyes and looking nothing short of miserable (and also about twelve), Sherlock replied, “It wasn’t really intentional.”

 

“Seems like that’s been happening a lot lately, which is odd, because I hardly ever hear Alex cry at night.”

 

“He has colicky nights.”

 

“And you usually wake me for those.”

 

“Well, thank God I’m going to stop, then, hm?” she snapped, and John’s outburst earlier came back to mind with an unwanted twist of guilt.

 

“Listen, Sherlock, I-”

 

“ _Don’t_ bother apologizing, John. I know you meant every word so it’s useless to attempt taking it back. People tend to show their true selves in moments of vulnerability or anger.” She looked down at her hand, picking at a fingernail, and then looked up again. “Don’t you have a date to go on?”

 

He sighed, recognizing that they wouldn’t make any progress tonight, not while he had an engagement and she was acting so odd. “Alright, just try to get some sleep, okay?”

 

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, nanny.”

 

 

 

As soon as the door closed behind John, Sherlock was picking up her phone. Weariness dragged at her very bones - too many consecutive sleepless nights, even before the case had begun - but this had to be done and it had to be done tonight or she would lose the trail and with it the case.

 

And yet.

 

She weighed the mobile phone in her hand, testing its reliable weight in her palm, the plastic warming to her touch like an old friend. Her presence and her presence alone could prove that these people at the circus were smugglers, that much was glaringly obvious; John was catching on to her methods, but not quickly enough to be of use after only two months. But at the same time, she didn’t want to damage what was tenuously left of her relationship with the good doctor any more than she already had.

 

It was completely ridiculous, this little mash-up with John, and completely illogical of her to partake in such petty games. All she knew was that John was _interesting_ , and kind, and he knew how to make Alex stop crying when even her impressive mind failed her. He shot a man for her even though they’d hardly known one another a day. And when he was near, her focus was compromised. 

 

If anything, that fact alone should have been the one to warn her away from the soldier for good. She’d told him and herself time and again that their time in the sun was destined to be brief, and yet the moment Sebastian - why must it have been _Sebastian_ , anyway? - called with one of the most interesting cases she’d been presented with in years, she was quickly editing over the thought and calling it a favor. It had been so obvious that even John had taken notice with his limited attention span. 

 

The very idea that...well, the very idea that he’d been so willing to end what they had, with no qualms whatsoever, was the pushing point. She’d been deluded with heteronormal ideas foisted upon her by her mother, those never-ending lectures about _when are you going to be normal, Sherlock?_ and endless exposure to Disney movies. The old bitch had won at last: her _monster_ daughter was developing feelings for a medic in knitted wooly armor.

 

The mere notion of it made Sherlock’s skin crawl, and she nearly threw her phone away with disgust. All her life since the age of eleven she had known that love was a useless emotion, its only purpose to manipulate and destroy people who could have been _brilliant_. Her father had succumbed, and while Sherlock supposed she owed her own existence to that fact, it still made her angry that the man she so admired growing up had forever been under the control of a woman she’d learned long ago not to trust. Mycroft, in his own way, had fallen as well, in love with his little puppet-master fantasies of ruling England from the shadows. Ever since the age of eleven, with the downward, whistling swing of a hand meant to heal and nurture, Sherlock had known just how poisonous love could be.

 

Perhaps that was why she and John were so suited. Set apart, he was nothing more than another broken soldier with an adrenaline addiction, and she was the Tragic Genius - or now, she supposed, the Tragic Single Mother with a Jaded Past, yet another thing she had thought she would never be. Apart, she and John were drifting through life anchored down by all the things they hated, but together they were dangerous. Their relationship had begun with the deaths of a woman in pink and a man in a cab, and from that moment onward he was like an intoxication she could no longer indulge in. He was the needle in her arm when that was all she craved; she was the gunfire late at night when he couldn’t sleep. It was explosive, and destructive, and the exact opposite of everything little girls were told they had to dream of. She didn’t want John to go, that much was obvious. Would intruding on his precious date really be the deciding factor?

 

There was only one man in the world she had ever come as close to giving her heart to as she was now with John, she contemplated, and that relationship had started in the exact same way - with gunfire.

 

Unable to keep an encroaching smile at bay, Sherlock dialed the phone and rose it to her ear in one fluid movement.

 

“Hello, Lestrade? Could you come over and watch Alex for a few hours?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the start of the one(s) with violence

Sarah was looking so pretty in a purple skirt and nice jacket that John couldn't even bring himself to resent the idea of going to the circus anymore. This was going to work in his favor, he could tell. Everything would work itself out. Though he still felt a bit guilty about abandoning the case, at least to the point that his leg actually started to ache a bit as they walked up to the theater. God, no, he didn't need to topple over on his first real date since getting home. Embarrassing as it was, he made himself think about the first day he’d known Sherlock, dinner at Angelo’s and chasing a cab through the streets of London with a pram holding a sleeping baby careening along in front of him. He didn’t know if he was more ashamed by the thought that made his blood race, or the fact that the pain in his leg almost instantly dissipated.

 

“Alright?” Sarah asked, noticing his unsteady gait.

 

“Fine, I’m fine...” He thought about it for a moment, though, and wondered how he could use the circumstance to his advantage. “Though it’s probably going to rain tomorrow.” At Sarah’s startled look he smiled. “I, ah, took some shrapnel -” he didn’t have to say _where_ , “- when I was in Afghanistan. It doesn’t bother me much, but every once in a while my leg acts up in bad weather.” There, now at least he had an excuse if they were together longer than expected and he had any problems.

 

They marched up the stairs to the ticket office, the buzz of the crowd already filling the little building as the time of the performance grew nearer. John went up to the counter and asked for their tickets, remembering that Sherlock had booked them under her name. “I’ve got three under that name,” said the young man, looking through his receipts.

 

John furrowed his brow. “No, there must be a mistake, she only got two-”

 

“And then I called back and ordered a third for myself,” finished an all-too-pleasant voice behind him. With all the slow-motion clarity that only a cliche scene in a horror film could bring, accompanied by a rush of soaring relief that would make him guilty later, John turned to see Sherlock smiling condescendingly at Sarah. “Hello, I’m Sherlock Holmes, John’s flatmate.”

 

Before the two women could shake hands John was stepping between them, casting Sherlock a halfhearted glare. “Can I talk to you for a moment? Sorry about this, Sarah, I’ll just be one minute...” He took Sherlock gently by the elbow but steered her firmly toward the stairs. “What the hell are you doing? Who’s with the baby?”

 

“It’s taken care of.”

 

“If you say you left him with Mrs. Hudson, I will wollop you. Sherlock, she’s 73 years old and takes narcotic medications in the evening, you can’t leave an infant with-”

 

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” snapped Sherlock with a roll of her eyes. She crossed her arms and glared at him without restraint. “John, I found a _babysitter_. I’m not as irresponsible as you may think, especially when it comes to Alex.”

 

He nodded in acknowledgment and apology, because really, people ought to stop underestimating Sherlock in the way of her son. “Right, fine, but why are you here? I thought you were going to work on the cypher tonight and try to catch them tomorrow before they left the country?” he asked.

 

“I wanted it done with sooner rather than later,” retorted Sherlock. “Don’t worry, I won’t interrupt your precious _date_. I’ll keep my distance; you won’t even notice I’m here.”

 

If by ‘keeping her distance’ Sherlock meant ‘hover behind you and whisper about the various artsy stunts going on while you’re trying to pull’ then she kept to her word. John could tell that Sarah was getting uncomfortable with his flatmate, who was quite obviously trying to send out some sort of girl-signal that John didn’t understand, other than that it made perfectly reasonable women stare at one another like slabs of meat.

 

Sherlock quieted down as the night progressed, though rather than making John feel better it only unsettled him and made him feel like he had to look around and spot wherever she'd wandered off to. At one point after being consistently on the other side of the stage for ten minutes John nearly panicked when he didn't see Sherlock, only to jump out of his skin when she whispered, "This bit is interesting, isn't it?" from directly behind him. He scowled at his own silliness and inched closer to Sarah, who was looking more like a third wheel every moment.

 

For a few minutes he lost himself in the show, legitimately interested, but next thing he knew his flatmate was being thrown from behind the curtain onto the stage. She rolled immediately and swiftly to her feet and began fighting back as the acrobat - the same rough size as the man who had attacked her in Soo Lin's flat - viciously took as many opportunities as possible to do her harm. Sherlock wasn't giving him many chances, that much was certain; she was obviously a gifted fighter. Still, John dove into the fray without hesitation, not hearing any of the spectators' or Sarah's cries of shock as he tried prying the spidery man off of his gi- his friend.

 

Sarah clocked the madman in the back of the head when John wasn't looking for the bright spots forming in his eyes. He hadn't even seen her coming, and now there was an unconscious acrobat draped over him. It was a bit too familiar to one particularly bad day in Afghanistan, and he threw the man off with a shudder.

 

“...police,” someone in the crowd said as they pulled out their mobile.

 

Grinning from ear-to-ear and only making her split lip bleed more, Sherlock took off running from the theatre. It took John an appallingly long time to remember to grab Sarah’s hand before rocketing off after her, giggling like a child. He supposed it was a good sign that Sarah was laughing as well. Sherlock staggered up the stairs to 221B first, clutching the door handle as laughter threatened to bowl her over for a moment, then tried vainly to shush them before opening the door. "That was downright juvenile," John said and she let out a low-pitched giggle. "What could possibly have possessed you to try fighting him?"

 

"He attacked me first; I was just looking around," Sherlock instantly defended herself in a murmur as they ascended the stairs. "Plus, he's the one who attacked me in Soo Lin's flat, and was shooting at us in the gallery. Now hush, or you'll wake the baby."

 

“Your lip is still bleeding.”

 

Very pointedly Sherlock turned to look John in the eye as she licked the bloody red line bisecting her lower lip; he’d never been so equally disturbed and aroused in his life.

 

The flat was dark and quiet, there was a lopsided shape lying still on the sofa, and through the fog in his brain John remembered that Sherlock claimed to have gotten a babysitter. Still seemed odd that whoever it was had been comfortable enough to fall asleep. Sarah crept into the kitchen and started poking around the stacks of books on the table, while Sherlock flicked on a lamp and sat in her usual chair beside the sofa.

 

DI Lestrade, it seemed, hadn't had any plans for the evening, as he was the one huddled up asleep on their sofa at only nine thirty.

 

"He's just resolved a four-day case and has been arguing with his ex-wife over custody of their children," explained Sherlock quietly over her book, "which is why he wasn't on hand for Van Coon's crime scene and is catching up on sleep. He was more than willing to help out, so please don't assume I blackmailed him or some other waffle."

 

John shook his head. "Wasn't going to. I've only met him the once, but Lestrade seems decent enough to do that sort of thing."

 

Proving that if two people discuss the life of an insomniac long enough they will probably hear and wake up, Lestrade gave a sleepy grunt and jerked almost puppet-like into a sitting position. "Someone talking to me?" he slurred.

 

Sherlock moved to the sofa and pushed the hair out of the DI's eyes with ruthless efficiency. "You can go home now," she said in a softer voice than John had anticipated. There was a foreign softness in her eyes as well, the same sort as when she looked at Alex, and John wondered vaguely if there had ever been something going on between the two. When he'd enlisted the inspector's help in getting Sherlock to the hospital after the cabbie, he had seemed wearily familiar with the detective and her shortcomings, and she seemed to read him in a way that was more effortlessly casual than with strangers, whom she was almost always trying to impress or intimidate.

 

"You still on the smuggler case?" replied Lestrade, a hint of curiosity in his voice even through the fatigue. At her nod he shook his head and sat back. "You'll probably be dashing back out in no time, then. I'll stay and help where I'm needed." The smile he and Sherlock exchanged was radiant, and John fought a sudden burning desire to know for sure if he should expect some sort of continuing fling between the pair.

 

Glancing at him from the corner of her eye, Sherlock gracefully stood and glided into her room, returning with Alex in his basket.

 

"You shouldn't jostle him so much," warned Lestrade, "all the books say it could cause insomnia later."

 

"I like to keep an eye on him," replied Sherlock without hesitation or shame, brushing one of her son's downy curls while he nestled into the basket cushion.

 

Sarah stepped out of the kitchen and let out a little gasp of awe at the sight of the baby. "Oh, how gorgeous," she said softly. Sherlock preened. "And this is your son?"

 

Blinking innocently, Sherlock deadpanned, "No, this is the _other_ baby," and Sarah laughed quietly until John politely shushed her with a nod to Alex's fidgeting. She momentarily tightened her lips - just visible for him to see - but smiled through it. Then he realized that Sherlock had been talking louder than Sarah's laughing, and how his date might interpret being shushed as him valuing Sherlock’s opinion more than hers. Sometimes people were like that.

 

She turned surely enough to Sherlock. "So the father's not around, then?" she asked primly.

 

Even if Lestrade flinched and grimaced Sherlock did not. "No, he isn't, thank God. Can we get to work now, please?"

 

There was a long, awkward silence as Sherlock stood again and moved to the bookcase to begin the hunt for the cypher anew. Sarah bit her lip, obviously embarrassed. "Well, dunno about anyone else, but I'm starving."

 

With a sigh Sherlock snapped her book shut, the ensuing bang louder than expected, and Alex opened his eyes, startled awake but not to tears. "Hey, lad," Lestrade instantly started in a soothing voice to counter the baby's alarmed expression. "What was that, eh? What was that nasty noise?" He reached into the basket and rubbed the back of Alex's pudgy hand; after a few moments the child smiled and started happily kicking his feet, crisis averted.

 

"Is he alright?" Sherlock asked over her shoulder, now carefully inspecting the pictures of the cypher taped to the wall.

 

"Fine, he's fine."

 

John felt guiltily torn. There was Sarah, pretty and kind and just having proven she was brave as well, sitting on the arm of his chair and looking uncomfortable. He was supposed to be spending this time with her, having fun and possibly falling in love. But there was also Sherlock, working the tedious case on her own, while running off of no food and only snatches of sleep when her body tried to give out but she beat it back into submission. John knew that if the case went on any longer she was going to get seriously ill; already she was looking gaunt and weak with exhaustion.

 

"I'm going to go have a quick word with Mrs. Hudson," he said with a small squeeze to Sarah's shoulder. He knew they didn't have anything suitable in, unless his date preferred warm formula and hydrochloric acid on a romantic night in. As he went downstairs he heard Sherlock shout in realization, shortly followed by Alex letting out a frightened wail.

 

When he returned ten minutes later with punch and a bowl of “nibbles” it was to find that Alex had settled but was still fussy and unhappy as Sherlock paced from the kitchen to the sitting room with him. There was something wild and hunted in her bloodshot eyes, a fraying around the edges that could be seen in the irregular shaking of her hand and the purple bruising on her neck that had gotten more vivid in the past day and a half. She glared at John as she turned to make another circuit, muttering to herself about the cypher and books.

 

John gestured wordlessly at Lestrade and Sarah behind her back; Lestrade helplessly shook his head and Sarah edged into the kitchen to explain. “I tried to help, but she kept snapping at me until I gave him over - how long has it been since she’s last slept?” Despite her reasonable frustration with the madwoman, Sarah was obviously concerned, and John couldn’t help admiring her for that. Once a doctor, and all that.

 

“To be honest, I don’t know,” he confided in her. “Other than dropping off for a few minutes in impossible positions, I haven’t seen her sleeping soundly for over a week.”

 

Sarah nodded with lips pursed. “Yeah, and she’s clever so it’s probably been even longer than that. So what do you want to do?” she asked without further ado, crossing her arms, all business. At his gaping, she sighed briefly. “John, I’m not stupid.”

 

“I never said-!”

 

“I know, but I just felt the need to justify myself after a night of feeling two inches tall,” smirked Sarah. “But honestly, your flatmate’s about to topple over and if she’s still holding her baby when that happens...”

 

He nodded, understanding perfectly, and stepped to Sherlock’s side. She tried to sidestep him, but he blocked her patch. “Sherlock,” he gently pried, though being certain to keep his voice firm. “Sherlock, hand Alex over. I mean it, give him to me _now_.”

 

“You won’t watch him,” snarled Sherlock, holding her son closer and making him cry out more loudly.

 

“Yes, I will watch him.”

 

“You won’t do it right!” she insisted, voice rising to a frantic pitch that John had never heard before. Lestrade looked up from where he’d been pretending not to hear the conversation, alarm in his face as he slowly rose up from the sofa. “None of you do it right; just let me look after him!”

 

Before she could turn away John grabbed her by the shoulders and then put one hand on her chin. “Sherlock, you aren’t making any sense. We will look after him, I promise we will look after him.” He held out his arms and waited, but Sherlock just stared like a helpless child.

 

“What if he stops breathing?” she asked as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

 

Sarah made a little sound of sympathy even as she continued to pretend the bowl of snacks sent by Mrs. Hudson fascinated her, but Lestrade walked right up to her shoulder and started murmuring platitudes in her ear while plucking Alex easily from her slackening arms. Then she went grey, her eyes rolled back, and John caught her before her knees buckled out. She was lighter than the last time he’d had to carry her, alarmingly so, but when he checked her pulse and temp things didn’t seem too critical. Just going too hard, too fast, on too little.

 

It took a few minutes, but Sherlock came blearily to right after John tried to move her gangly limbs toward the sofa and nearly dropped her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung tight to keep from falling, breathing fast and shallow as she looked blearily around. “Where’s-?”

 

“Lestrade has him,” supplied John. Relief was quickly flooding out both his fear and anger with his flatmate when he noted that even with the one-word inquiry she had snapped out of whatever episode she’d been having. “He’s fine. You, on the other hand, are going to _sleep_.”

 

“But John, the book-”

 

He hauled her over to the sofa, and probably the most alarming bit was that she didn’t fight even when he was pulling an afghan over her. “You need rest or you’ll get ill, and then what good will you be to anyone? Sarah, Lestrade and I are going to go get some takeout. We’ll take Alex with us. You will eat when we get back, and then you will sleep some more. We’ll figure out the cypher tomorrow, and because we’ll have less time you’ll be extra brilliant, and then we’ll catch them, and then we’ll come back here and you’ll eat and sleep some more until you’re back in top form, okay?”

 

Bulging eyes rolling in her head, this time with fond irritation rather than dizziness, Sherlock seemed to surrender. “Can I at least have the cypher to look at while you’re gone? If I fall asleep now, I won’t wake up to eat.”

 

Nodding, he handed over the printout and her notes. “Just no getting up and jumping around.” He smiled and tapped her on the forehead, unable to help himself. “Doctor’s orders.”

 

She smiled and weakly pushed his hand away. When John stood up it was to see Lestrade and Sarah watching him with equally-incredulous looks on their faces. He shrugged in a distinct “oh, fuck off,” gesture and they looked politely away. “I’ll get Alex’s romper.”

 

Once they were off toward the Chinese place at the end of the street, John looked at the book two German tourists were reading, finding it hard to drag himself fully out of the case. A thought occurred to him, and before she fell asleep John called Sherlock.

 

"What?" she answered, voice small but still demanding.

 

"Have you tried the London A to Z?"

 

"Wh-? No, I haven't..." there was a small grunt of effort as Sherlock seemingly wrenched herself off of the sofa and then shuffled through the bins of books. Pages softly flipped and turned and rustled, and then the book hit the floor with a thunk. "John, this is it!" she shouted, loudly enough that Lestrade heard and started chuckling. She rung off before he could say anything else, and John sighed with relief.

 

As he pocketed his phone he smiled up at Sarah. "That should keep her busy until we get back."

 

"Did she sound more lucid?" asked Sarah, and he nodded. "Oh, good. I was a bit worried when she was going on about the baby not breathing."

 

"Yeah, I dunno what that was about," he agreed. "It might just be a paranoid-new-mum thing?"

 

But Lestrade was shaking his head. "When he was born Alex was on a respirator for two weeks," he explained, sounding pained by the very thought. "They didn't know if he was gonna make it for the first couple of hours."

 

Almost out of reflex with a half-gasp wrenching in his throat, John looked down at Alex as though expecting something about the child's appearance to belie his perilous first days, but he was just sucking on his own fingers from the safety of the car seat hanging from Lestrade's elbow. “But he was only a few weeks early!” he insisted. “I mean, I don’t claim to be an expert, but he should have been able to breathe on his own.”

 

Another shake of the DI’s head and a frown. “I really thought she told you all of this. She wasn’t well during her pregnancy at all. Neither of them were.”

 

John bit his lip but didn’t know what to say. He didn’t like talking about Sherlock as though she were helpless, because she was far from it. Being told bad news immediately after major surgery was always disorienting, but he’d never seen it effect someone’s subconscious as strongly as it had apparently done Sherlock’s. At least that solved the mystery of why she was so exhausted - _I like to keep an eye on him_ \- she’d been sitting up watching Alex at night, making sure he kept breathing even when it was obviously unnecessary.

 

“You really care about her,” Sarah said casually, and John felt his face flush.

 

“I - we’re not like - she’s not my-”

 

She fixed him with a skeptical look and he quieted. “You fancy her, and she was practically seething with jealousy every time she looked at us tonight.” She smiled. “It’s okay. We probably wouldn’t work out anyway. But I do plan to be your friend; your life is far too exciting to leave it entirely.”

 

They grinned at one another before John opened the door to the restaurant. 

 

Just as they had gotten the enormous bag of food and were preparing to reenter the cold, John’s phone went off. “Looks like Sherlock’s making progress on the cypher. The smugglers are taking refuge for the night and leaving early tomorrow morning, looking for...something. She’s not got to that part yet.”

 

As they walked, Lestrade and Sarah got into a lively conversation about some film that had come out while John was in Afghanistan. It sounded awful, something about a bachelor party and Mike Tyson’s pet tiger, but the two were laughing so much and quipping so many inside-jokes back and forth that John couldn’t help wanting to see the film for himself. Spirits were high until the flat came within view and, John looked up in the windows.

 

A cry of, “Oh, god, no!” fell from his lips unwarranted as he saw the painted symbols on the glass, and broke into a run without answering Lestrade or Sarah’s questions. Without knowing about the deadly signs left by the smugglers, how were they to know that Sherlock wasn’t just trying to see the code in large-print for herself?

 

“Sherlock!” John called inside the door of 221B, quickly turning to tend to Mrs. Hudson, who had apparently tried to fight off whoever had intruded the house. She had been knocked out, but should be alright. 

 

His mind was screaming to get upstairs, but the rest of him was frozen, paralyzed. The honest-to-god truth was that Sherlock very well could be lying dead up there with an origami lotus on her palm. For a moment he could see it perfectly: the slow horror as he ascended the stairs and went round the partition wall, the sight of Sherlock sprawled boneless with her feet still hanging on the edge of the sofa while the rest of her had fallen, wide open eyes red with burst capillaries, pink cupid’s-bow mouth open in a silent scream, arms spread crookedly like a flightless bird, and to top it all off an origami lotus sitting over her heart. His limp would come back, of course, and his tremors and nightmares. He would never see Alex again. He would be alone for the rest of his life, because how does one move on from Sherlock Holmes?

 

But the flat was empty, John discovered when Lestrade and Sarah’s presence made him drag his leaden body up the stairs. There were signs of a struggle, and the cypher had been stuffed hastily under the sofa cushion, to be found when John sank down onto it in disbelief.

 

“I’ve called an ambulance for your landlady,” Sarah came up to tell him before going back down the stairs to see to Mrs. Hudson.

 

John looked at the printed out photograph from his phone with a hand over his mouth; his mind was going at a hundred miles an hour even as Lestrade took the paper from his hand and inspected Sherlock’s scrawling handwriting across the cypher. “Well, they haven’t gone far,” said the DI, settling Alex’s car seat on the table. “Think you ought to get your gun, Doctor Watson.”

 

He’d said it so casually, so cavalierly, that John mindlessly nodded and stood up before his awareness caught up with him through the fear. Eyes wide and mouth gaping, he watched as Lestrade laughed anxiously. “Come on, mate, I’m not an idiot. You want to know how I knew not to arrest you, that you were a good enough man to trust?” John nodded. “Because Sherlock stopped deducing to protect you. She wouldn’t quit showing off for the bloody Queen. She’ll outlive God trying to have the last word. But she stopped for you. Now _go and get your gun_.”

 

There was no need to say it twice. Sarah was already volunteering to stay behind and wait for the ambulance and watch Alex while they went on their bloody rescue mission. She almost looked a bit put-out by missing the action. Once John’s gun was tucked into his belt they were off with the cypher in hand.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence, very strong implications of past child abuse, and ableism in this chapter. Take care of yourselves, first and foremost.

_“A book is like a secret garden hidden in your pocket...”_

 

The woman, General Shan, was speaking to Sherlock even though she was slumped almost double in the chair she’d been tied to, blood sliding down the side of her face - by God, she really wasn’t having the best week, physically, was she? - from a head wound, probably pistol-whip. Sherlock’s replies were weak and slow, indicating a likely concussion, but her eyes, on the other hand, John noticed when he peered carefully around the corner, were alert and slowly taking in everything they could without moving her head. She was biding her time, planning, deducing, even then. Behind her back, her clumsy hands were slowly working at the bonds holding her to the chair. John couldn't fight a surge of pride.

 

At least until two rough pairs of hands seized him by the arms. He had just enough awareness divided to tell when Lestrade reached from the shadows and plucked his gun from the safety of his belt while remaining unseen.

 

"Oh, it looks as though we have a volunteer," said Shan as if the show were still going on, while the two thugs wrestled him into another chair and tied him down. "Please, sir, sit."

 

Sherlock’s head snapped up and her eyes widened dramatically. “I don’t know where the treasure is!” she tried to tell Shan, but the old woman wasn’t listening. “I don’t even know _what_ it is! _John!_ ”

 

He wanted to say something reassuring to calm Sherlock down, but a gag was being forced into his mouth. Shan arranged the enormous dart-shooter from earlier so that it was aiming right at him, and John felt sweat beginning to blossom across his upper lip and forehead. He’d been in worse fixes than this, certainly, having been shot and kidnapped and brutalized before nearly dying of malaria, but every brush with his own demise was different and therefore equally terrifying. 

 

The blood was pumping viciously through his ears, deafening him even as he could see Sherlock continuing to shout and eventually breaking free of her bonds. But none of that mattered, even as Lestrade dove from his cover and started swinging John’s pistol down onto smugglers’ skulls in an attempt to keep from shooting until it was needed. A really proper panic-attack was settling over him when Sherlock vanished from sight and the sandbag continued to sink nearer to the mechanism. It was Maiwand all over again.

 

At probably the last possible moment Lestrade caught the mechanism in an impressive rugby-tackle that would have made John’s dad proud, and the dart shot just past him to hit whoever was behind him. For a second Lestrade looked horrified, then horribly relieved as he ran to where John was trying very hard to reign in his breathing.

 

The DI only loosened his gag and patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll get the rest in a minute; Sherlock’s pretty bunged up.” John nodded and let him go, grateful for the minutes alone to get control over himself. He hadn’t had a near-attack like that in ages, since before he’d even met Sherlock.

 

Another few minutes and he was free rom his bonds. Sherlock was looking ashen and resolutely refusing to speak for the pain in her throat, but at least she was conscious. John hugged her without a thought. None of them had seen where Shan ran off to.

 

\---

 

The next morning, John left Sherlock asleep on the sofa and Alex with Mrs. Hudson to go back to Van Coon’s office and have a word with his receptionist. Sherlock had used the last reserves of her energy to finish the cypher and identify just where the missing treasure had gotten to, then fallen inelegantly (for the first time in her life) on top of him in his bed and refused to move for twelve hours.

 

They hadn’t talked about their unresolved feelings in the wee hours of the morning, mostly because Sherlock had been too drained, but John suspected it was also better that they didn’t talk about it. At least not right away; he wasn’t sure he was ready to admit just how much that slip of a woman had impacted his life in only two months.

 

Still, at least the receptionist had had a good morning.

 

She offered to buy him lunch in her good mood; John declined, but did stop for a coffee in Speedy’s before going up. Had he accepted the receptionist’s offer, he wouldn’t have been sitting in the cafe window when a sleek black car pulled up to the curb of Baker Street. A woman well into her sixties though still beautifully striking stepped out, and for one moment John’s breath froze in his throat - she looked _just like Sherlock_. Even before the woman stepped up to the front step of 221B he knew it had to be Mrs. Holmes. For five minutes he agonized over whether or not he should make himself scarce, but Sherlock had never mentioned her mother outside of arguing with her brother. She’d never mentioned _any_ of her other family, really, and John wanted to meet the woman.

 

Trotting up the stairs at a casual pace, John knocked on the door to alert Sherlock of his arrival, and froze in the door. Something was very wrong.

 

The tall, black-and-grey-haired woman was standing tall in the center of the sitting room with arms crossed. His flatmate was sitting in her usual chair, but everything about her posture was screaming _wrong wrong wrong all wrong_. It wasn’t her usual lounging sprawl, nor was it the sort of straight-backed position of a child trying to appear at equals with their parents. Sherlock’s knees were pulled in tight, feet crooked in toward one another, shoulders slumped and rounded forward with head bowed slightly down, and hands opening and closing into loose fists at her sides. Her eyes were rimmed with red and face was very pale; her hair was still mussed as though her mother’s arrival had woken her up.

 

“Sherlock?” asked John from the door. 

 

His flatmate didn’t look up, but her mother turned at once to him and smiled through red lips; it was sharp as a double-edged sword. “Ah, you must be Doctor Watson,” she said, marching to him and shaking his hand. “It’s wonderful to meet you; I’m Violet, Sherlock’s mother.”

 

He shook her hand, though, seeing Sherlock still frozen in the chair, it felt like a small betrayal. “Her mother.”

 

Violet ended the handshake in the perfectly appropriate amount of time and moved to stand behind her daughter’s chair, hands discreetly rubbing her shoulders and still smiling like a bird of prey. “Yes, I know, it’s a shock, isn’t it? The way my daughter speaks of me, you’d think that both of her parents got cancer and died!” She laughed and squeezed Sherlock’s shoulders, and she squirmed. “Oh, sweetheart, stop fussing, you know I’m joking and it was years ago. Do you mind if I smoke, Doctor?”

 

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he admitted, unsure of how the words were even coming out of his mouth. “Secondhand smoke and all that.”

 

The older woman rolled her eyes and lit up regardless. “Oh, come now, that’s all just a myth. Now perhaps you’ll tell me: where’s my grandson?” Identical plumes of blue-gray smoke left her nostrils in thin streams, and for a moment she perfectly resembled a dragon. John looked to Sherlock, expecting and grimly hoping her to just say _something_ \- forbid her mother from smoking around her child, tell her it was none of her damn business, hit the woman, for God’s sake anything. But she just sat in her chair, staring at the same spot she’d been staring at since John walked in, unmoving. Like a caged animal. So, he did all he could do. He spoke for her.

 

“He was born with breathing problems; I won’t have you smoking if you’re going to see him,” he insisted. Violet pressed her cigarette into the back of Sherlock’s chair while staring at John with a mix of disdain and respect, mindless of the ash falling down into her daughter’s hair. The women really did look shockingly similar when side-by-side, and yet they seemed nothing alike. He opened the window despite the March chill to air the place out, then faced the room again. “Er. Shall I put the kettle on?”

 

“Sherlock can do it,” announced Violet, giving Sherlock’s shoulder another squeeze. “Can’t you, dear? You can make a nice cuppa for us. Go on, love, you’ll do fine.” Haltingly, as thought she were fighting herself every step of the way, Sherlock stood up and walked to the kitchen like a marionette on uneven strings.

 

The moment the younger woman was gone Violet was ushering John into his chair and seating herself on the sofa. “I’m so very glad we have a chance to finally meet, Doctor,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “I’ve just been so worried that Sherlock wasn’t properly looking after herself - I never wanted her to leave home, you see, thought it was too risky - so I’m just so very pleased you’re here.”

 

“I...I’m sorry, I don’t think-”

 

“Oh, it’s alright dear, Sherlock isn’t listening.”

 

“Isn’t she?”

 

“Of course not, she’s making tea.”

 

Violet said this as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and more than impossible for her daughter to concentrate on more than one task at a time.

 

“Mrs. Holmes-”

 

“Call me Mummy, dear.”

 

“Ah. Mrs. Holmes. I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you.”

 

Smiling and obviously puzzled by his apparent lack of understanding, Violet shook her head. “Doctor Watson, you must have read Sherlock’s psychological profile. Unsociable, loud, impolite with spurts of violence, completely unable to relate to her peers or respond to social cues? She’s a sociopath. She’s _retarded_.”

 

There was a loud crash in the kitchen. John turned to look and found Sherlock standing over three shattered mugs with one hand pressed tight to her mouth. Fury unlike any he’d ever felt before bloomed in his chest, murderous and cold. “Sherlock, sweetheart, it’s alright,” Violet called in a sickly condescending voice, “just try again; I’m sure you’ll get it right. Eventually.”

 

“Perhaps you ought to get to the point, Mrs. Holmes,” he said with very little room for interpretation. “It’s been a pretty rough few days for all of us.”

 

“Yes, I heard. Strangled twice and beaten to a pulp, all in four days, Sherlock? Dear me.” Violet reached compulsively for her cigarette case, but fought against it and returned her attention to the matter at hand. “Yes, that’s what I’m here about. I didn’t know Sherlock was pregnant. Somehow she managed to manipulate her brother into secrecy; she’s clever like that. If I had known she would have had an abortion, believe me, and it would have been for the best. But Doctor, obviously her reckless behavior of these past few days indicates that she’s hardly able to take care of herself, let alone a - oh, thank you dear, and you remembered how I take it! - let alone a helpless infant.”

 

Sherlock had come back in with three mugs of tea precariously balanced in her hands and handed them off before sinking back into her chair to hide in the steam. It was perfect; in the three times Sherlock had ever made tea before that day, it had never come close to this much effort.

 

He forced himself to meet Violet’s eyes. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

 

“She wants to take Alex home with her,” concluded Sherlock quietly. 

 

Violet rounded her gaze upon her and she visibly shrank. “You named him Alexander?” Sherlock nodded. Violet turned back to John. “As you can probably see, she doesn’t have the faintest idea how to raise a child, especially one that is very likely to have the same - peculiarities - as her, surely you understand. A child like Sherlock has to be dealt with a firm hand. Her father never understood that; he indulged her. Every time she started to cry because ‘ _the lights are too bright’_ or ‘ _the air vents are evil’_ he would run right over with some little toy or trinket for her to play with. Alexander spoiled her.”

 

“They weren’t toys,” whispered Sherlock, now sunk so low in her seat John could barely see her behind her knees. 

 

Things were getting out of hand, and fast, and John had no idea what to do short of resorting to violence, which was a very appealing option. He had never thought...well, now he knew why Sherlock never spoke of her family. For goodness’ sake, why had _Mycroft_ never mentioned any of this? For how protective the man was of Sherlock, he seemed blind when it came to the devil inside their own house.

 

“You understand, Doctor,” continued Violet, apparently giving up and pulling another cigarette out of her antique case. “It would be wisest to leave the child in my care, as I already know how to raise him. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

 

Yes, obviously she knew how to raise children properly, without damaging or traumatizing them. John stood up and marched over the coffee table in order to stand above Violet Holmes, plucking the cigarette from between her lips and crushing it on the coffee table. “Actually, it’s not Doctor; it’s Captain Watson,” he said in a steel-edged voice. “And I do believe it’s time for you to leave, ma’am.”

 

He waited, never tearing his eyes away, and at last the older woman stood. Her shock and being ordered around seemed to have reduced her to half her height, and her hands trembled as she forced the cigarette case into her purse. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what I’ve-”

 

“You’ve outstayed your welcome, Mrs. Holmes. Now if you please, I’ll show you to the door.”

 

Within the span of a blink he had the woman on the front step, looking deeply ruffled and upset. “Can’t I at least see my-?” The door slammed with a most satisfying echo in her face before John locked it.

 

Sherlock was still sitting frozen in her chair when he went back up. He didn’t dare come too close, not knowing just how she would react yet. “Are you okay?” he asked after a few minutes. She nodded, though her jaw was clenched tight and eyes sparkling. “Has she always been like that?”

 

Again, a shaky nod, but this time Sherlock swallowed and briefly pressed the back of her hand to her mouth before replying. “Since I was eleven. Mye left for uni, and she tried to fix me.”

 

He’d never heard her call her brother by anything but his full name before. That, if anything, was what made John get up and cross over to sit on the arm of her chair, draping a loose arm around her shoulders. Sherlock leaned into his body and hid her face like a child might in their mother’s skirts. “Sherlock, there is _nothing_ to fix,” he told her gently but firmly. “You are just _fine,_ _exactly_ as you are.” He swallowed hard. “And I love you.”

 

She sucked in a shaky breath and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, letting all the air out in a drawn-out cry of what could have been either relief or utter despair. John hoped for the former, since she refused to let him go, but didn’t ask questions.


End file.
